1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device and method, and more particularly to a technique for reducing the noise while preserving the edge of an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, this kind of image processing device is well known which employs an epsilon (ε) filter (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-118064, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-8935, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-159311).
The epsilon filter switches the filtering ON/OFF, depending on whether or not a level difference between the noticed pixel and its peripheral pixels is beyond a certain threshold value, and reduces the noise while preserving the edge of image.